What Doctor Gottlieb Saw (3 page)

He had, however, fixed the lamp.

*   *   *

Gottlieb's appetite still hadn't returned by midday. In lieu of lunch, he spent half an hour composing his final wishes. The nib of his fountain pen dotted the tip of his tongue with the taste of cold, inky steel.

He'd never married, and he owned little. To his mother he left his savings, which had grown in the few years since he'd accepted a stipend from the Reichsbehörde. Medical texts and related items, including some files (those not embargoed by the Schutzstaffel), he bequeathed to his alma mater, the University of Heidelberg.

After sealing the document in an envelope and setting it on his desk, beside the electromagnetics textbook and Gretel's wildflower, he pulled out the bird-watching binoculars. Bird watching was a good excuse for entering the forest, from which a brave soul might run for it.

But Gottlieb was still gathering the courage to make the attempt when Rudolf returned. The bright flare of irritation quickly burned itself out, to be followed by darker feelings of shame and resignation.

I'm a doctor; I'm here to help them. Very well. Let it be said I performed my duty until the very end.

Gottlieb pulled the relevant file and opened his journal while his patient sprawled in a chair.

Rudolf said, without preamble, “You have to drug me.”

He didn't cover his mouth when he yawned; his breath wafted across the desk, carrying to Gottlieb the odors of coffee and a sour stomach. The flying man's eyes were pink through the sclera. The skin beneath his bloodshot eyes had become dark and puffy in the days since they'd last met.

“How long have you had trouble sleeping?”

“It started three nights ago,” said Rudolf. “And I can't take another. So give me something.”

Oskar had died two days ago. Gottlieb remembered how, just before the accident, Rudolf had been reprimanded for failing to concentrate during his training session.

“What happened three nights ago?”

“That's when the crazy bitch starting banging on the wall in the middle of the night.” Rudolf yawned again.

Gottlieb sat up. “Crazy bitch” meant Gretel. She and Rudolf shared a wall.

“Oh?”

“Yes. I need something so that I can sleep through her racket tonight. The medics refuse.”

“Dr. von Westarp is very strict about these things.”

“I don't care. I need sleep.” Rudolf rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Wham, wham, wham! Every night.” He shook his head. “She's bent, you know. Out of her mind.”

“What is she doing?”

Rudolf noticed the buttercup. He snatched it, twirled it in his fingers.

“Decorating her room,” he said, then crushed the blossom. A snowfall of flower petals dusted the rug.

Gottlieb started to ask, “Decorating? What—“

But he stopped, because he knew what she'd been doing: hanging wildflowers. But for that she would need…What had she said this morning?
They haven't found them all.

“You're certain she started three nights ago?”

“I've hardly slept since then. So yes, I'm certain.”

Gottlieb grabbed the textbook and stood, tipping his chair in his haste. “I must go,” he said.

Rudolf moaned. “What about my sedative?”

But Gottlieb was already running outside.
Please
, he thought.
Just a little more time.

He found the foreman Gretel had been speaking to, and inquired about her visit.

She'd come to return a hammer, said the foreman.

Had she borrowed anything else?

Yes. But while the foreman claimed nothing noteworthy had happened during his interactions with the girl, Gottlieb insisted he recount both conversations in detail. After he did, Gottlieb knew he'd found the loose thread.

The sticking point was, still, Klaus's battery. Gretel had come nowhere near it, yet she'd somehow sabotaged it during the few moments between when her brother departed the battery lab and arrived at the test site. He'd gone straight from one to the other.

And, thus, past the new generator.

The susurration of tires on crushed gravel announced the arrival of an automobile. A black Mercedes emerged from the forest, rolling along the lane to the farmhouse. Dr. von Westarp had returned from Berlin.

Gottlieb sprinted for the generator hut. He barged into the middle of an argument. Sweaty, red-faced men shouted across the hulking innards of a disassembled dynamo. The room stank of hot oil, diesel fuel, and fear.

Somebody said to him, “Who the hell are you?”

“I know what happened to the generator,” said Gottlieb. He brandished a nail he'd borrowed from the foreman. “You're looking for one of these.”

“Since when do we take advice from the medical staff?”

“The doctor has returned from Berlin. He'll demand a report on your progress fixing this generator. If you follow my advice, he might not have you executed.”

It took half an hour of difficult labor, but in the end they found it. Gottlieb laughed. The engineers looked at him as though he were part sage, part madman.

He wiped his eyes, then sought Osterhagen.

*   *   *

A blood-red sunset streamed through bay windows overlooking the grounds. Von Westarp paced before his blackboard. The board contained a palimpsest scrawl of the doctor's notes, and a large drawing that was part anatomical cutaway, part circuit diagram. His footsteps kicked up eddies of chalk dust. He hadn't yet changed from his SS-Oberführer uniform to his preferred lab coat.

Standartenführer Pabst had escorted Gottlieb to the doctor's study. Von Westarp spent twenty minutes describing the humiliation of reporting to Reichsführer Himmler the loss of seventeen years' work. For ten more minutes, he explained how the accident revealed systematic failures in the operation of the Reichsbehörde. Gottlieb's sweaty palms threatened to soak through the paper sack on his lap.

Von Westarp said, “How do you explain yourself?”

“Oskar's death was unavoidable. Gretel wanted it to happen.”

“She knew?” Von Westarp trembled. The beet color had begun to drain from his face as the tirade came to an end, but now it returned. “She foresaw but didn't warn us?”

The soggy bag crackled on Gottlieb's lap. “You misunderstand me, doctor. She's not merely clairvoyant. She uses her prescience to manipulate fate.” Gottlieb looked from von Westarp, to Pabst, then back again. “Gretel is broken, was born broken, in ways I can't easily explain. And now, with her power…We have no frame of reference for what that girl has become.”

“You're shifting the blame to save yourself.”

Gottlieb reached into the sack. “Do you know how a diesel generator works? I didn't until recently,” he said. “It's essentially a gasoline engine that spins magnets past a coil of wire. A good generator maintains a steady flow of electricity regardless of demand. There are electrical and mechanical safeguards to ensure this. But the most important of these is the governor. It keeps things spinning at a steady rate.” From the sack he withdrew a bent nail. “Unless something gets lodged inside.”

Von Westarp turned the nail in his hand. The dying sunlight illuminated faint scoring from a pair of vise-grip pliers. The engineers had struggled to remove it.

Pabst asked, “Why did she sabotage our infrastructure?”

“She didn't. Not directly. She's too subtle for that.” Three days ago, Gottlieb explained, Gretel had accosted the foreman overseeing work on the new lab. She'd asked for a spare hammer and nails. He offered her the bucket. She took a few nails, thanked him, and went on her way. But the foreman, busy and distracted, didn't return the nail bucket to its proper spot. It wasn't long before somebody kicked it over. They gathered the spilled nails.

“But they missed one,” said Gottlieb, pointing at the twisted metal. He took another item from the paper sack. Pabst wrinkled his nose at the scents of leather and foot odor. “This boot belongs to one of the engineers. See this gap between the rubber and the leather? It's where the nail lodged when he stepped on it. Not deep enough to pierce his foot. But it did hitch a ride to the generator hut.”

Where magnets yanked it into the bowels of the machine. Where it went unnoticed by the engineers.

“By the time the engineers realized there was a problem and cut the flow of diesel fuel, it was too late. Without speed control, the rotor accelerated beyond its tolerances. The voltage regulators couldn't keep up.”

“The power surge,” said Pabst. “The blown fuses.”

Gottlieb said, “This happened just as Klaus carried his battery to the test site. The batteries contain delicate circuitry. It's susceptible to—“ He opened his bird-watching notebook, read the phrase Osterhagen had provided. “—electromagnetic pulse.”

As for why Gretel had done this, Gottlieb explained how the close call played on Klaus's phobia. No mere warning could have carried the same visceral impact. “I predict Klaus will make rapid progress in his training. His sister orchestrated this experience to hone him. Temper him.”

Von Westarp sunk into a brooding silence. It lasted several minutes. The only sound was a faint
click
when Pabst turned on a lamp.

“Do you know what this means?” von Westarp whispered.

Yes
, thought Gottlieb.
She's too dangerous, too subtle to be let loose. Please see that.

“If there were a God,” said von Westarp, “she would know His mind, and thwart Him. He has been replaced.”

Like a sweater caught on a burr, Gottlieb's breath hitched in his chest. Von Westarp was making a grievous error, thinking he could use Gretel. But Gottlieb had narrowly avoided one execution this week, and couldn't bear to start over again. Perhaps it was weakness, perhaps it was cowardice, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

“Excellent work, Gottlieb. If you hadn't persevered, the full scope of my success might have gone unrecognized a great deal longer.”

Gottlieb knew when he was dismissed. He should have melted with relief, but he couldn't. Not while one loose end remained.

As he departed, he heard von Westarp address the colonel: “I'm troubled, Pabst. This flaw in the batteries is unacceptable. Go down to the laboratory….”

*   *   *

Von Westarp called off the search for Oskar's body the next morning. The excavation had grown so deep and wide it threatened to disrupt training operations. It did make a convenient grave, however. They tossed Osterhagen's body in the crater before filling it.

Gottlieb said a silent prayer for his friend, then took a walk to the meadow.

Gretel was there. But she had company today. Von Westarp had assigned a soldier to attend her. Right now the private carried an armload of buttercups and lavender. Another soldier had been sent to the mess hall, to collect empty milk bottles that Gretel could use as vases.

And just like that, the last loose thread unraveled before Gottlieb's eyes. Gottlieb had worked at it well into the night, as he drank to Osterhagen's memory. But he'd made no headway.

With a minimum of effort, Gretel had managed to save her brother's life while simultaneously ensuring the near miss would become a scar he carried for the rest of his life. And along the way she managed to demonstrate—vividly—a major flaw in the battery design.

All this in the course of hanging wildflowers in her room. Which, doubtless, she would have done even if she'd had no need to rescue Klaus. She liked flowers.

Gretel was nothing if not efficient. And yet she'd gone so far out of her way to change her routine on the day Oskar died. She hadn't done it before or since. Why hunt mushrooms on that one day?

Because Gretel had wanted Gottlieb to see her.

When they'd first met, Osterhagen had said Gottlieb was Pabst's dogsbody. But that was wrong. Not a dogsbody—a cat's-paw. He'd been Gretel's cat's-paw.

She'd arranged everything so that Gottlieb would dissect her plan and lay it out for von Westarp. Just to instill von Westarp with a sense of awe. From now on, Gretel could do anything she wanted.

Who controlled the farm now? Gottlieb couldn't say for certain. But he did know that from now on he lived by Gretel's indulgence as much as von Westarp's.

She had murdered God. Nature had lost its grip on her.

Copyright © Ian Tregillis 2010

Cover art © copyright Gary Kelley 2010

 

Books by Ian Tregillis

 

Bitter Seeds
(Tor Books, 2010)

The Coldest War (forthcoming from
Tor Books)